Adding columns manually to a Panoply table

Panoply's data sources automatically create columns based on incoming data. If the source data has no values for a specific column, then Panoply won't create it. Likewise, if all the data in a column is nested data (objects or arrays). Instead of creating a column, Panoply's default behavior for dealing with nested data is to generate subtables.

Changing Panoply's behavior for dealing with nested data is the main reason you need to manually add a column to a table. Instead of allowing Panoply to create subtables, you configure it to flatten the nested data. And by choosing this behavior, a new column must be added to support it. The "How do I flatten my data" topic in the Panoply Community explains and provides the steps on how to do the nested data flattening in Panoply.

Now, to manually add a column to a table:

1. Execute an ALTER TABLE statement that adds a new column. Customize the sample provided below. Replace schema_name, table_name, and column_name with your own values.
   

   ALTER TABLE "schema_name"."table_name"
     ADD COLUMN "column_name" bigint;
   

 
2. Know the data type of the column you're adding. It must be one of these types:
   • bigint
   • boolean
   • double precision
   • timestamp without timezone
   • varchar
   
   If you use any other type, future collections might fail to ingest data properly.

A few notes to keep in mind:

• You can only add a column if you are the owner of the table/relation.
 
• If you expect to see a specific column in a table, but it's not there, manually adding one will not cause the data source to ingest data to it.